


something forgiving

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Gen, I hate tags, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Not Canon Compliant, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-27 20:53:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19797577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: three years later.





	something forgiving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [holograms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms/gifts).



> written 13 july-14 july.  
> sick & on my phone.
> 
> i wanted holograms to tell me what to write. she told me “something forgiving”.
> 
> so. here we are.

“There’s a rider. From the west ... southwest? Maybe five miles to us.”

“Food is free. Bed and horse are silver. Penny each if he’ll do some work.”

“Yes, ser. I know.”

She wished he’d stop calling her that.

  
Bread was the first thing. It was always the first and often the last, if you didn’t include lighting the fires and banking them and sweeping the floors and raising the uppermost attic window, leaning out as far as she could to feel the morning on her face a moment. To feel free.

Then the baby would squall or Pod would call her for something and she had to go running.

The baby was seven months old (“tomorrow!” said Podrick, excited, as if he expected her to bake a cake and invite the neighbors.) She had more or less gotten used to having it around as a _concept_ , but the physical reality was more jarring and every time she felt balanced, it learned something new and threw her off-kilter again.

“She rolled over!” Pod told her one day. He looked proud enough to burst. “Only once, she hasn’t been able to do it on command yet, but soon.”

“Excellent. We can put a sign out front. _Watch the baby roll over, just two pennies.”_

Podrick opened his mouth and shut it again.

“I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. I don’t mean to ... I’m sorry.” She was staring at the child in its cloth swing, chewing one of its toes.

“You’ll have to name her, sometime, you know.”

“No. I don’t.”

“It won’t make her any more real.”

Brienne didn’t like how he knew her fears without her speaking it. She said: “I thought she was going to die. I _expected_ her to die. How can I name something that will die on me?”

Jaime never named his horses, she wanted to say. Jaime would understand.

She wanted to say: I prayed for her to die and the gods are cruel, _cruel_ , because she lived.

“Jeyne?”

“No.”

“Alayne.”

“No.”

“What was your mother’s name, my lady?”

“Absolutely not. Name her after your own mother. Name her after yourself, for all I care.”

The baby, unnamed, spit up.

She joined Podrick at the gate. “This rider of yours is taking his time.”

“Could be a lady, my lady.”

“No. A woman traveling alone ... no. Do you think the horse is lame?”

“Or old. Tired. We could have meat, if he’d sell it.”

“He won’t.”

Pod didn’t mean that as a complaint, she told herself. He wasn’t judging her. He was only hungry.

So was she. So was the baby, no doubt, but feeding the child was not her responsibility; she had tried to do it that first week and nearly threw it against a wall in pure fury.

Instead she’d shoved it at Pod. “Here. _You_ want it, _you_ raise it.”

“Ser -“

“I can’t bear to look at it. It's your child, not mine."

So Pod took away the squalling red lump and left Brienne to her grief.

They didn’t have a proper godswood on the land nor anything like it, but there was a quiet level well-shaded place, near enough to the river to hear its laughter. The house of the dead.

She went there to be alone and pray for — she didn’t know what. She didn’t know what gods would listen to her. She’d once told Podrick to go and pray, thinking he would be more kindly judged, but he refused: “If it’s all the same, I’ve had enough of gods and prayers.”

So had she.

So, she didn’t pray; she only rested against a tree, legs stretched into the spattered bits of sunlight. Whose bones was she sitting on? She couldn’t remember. Not even if it was a man or woman; not even how they had died or if she had killed them.

All that killing. And for what?

Grass grew thick around the newest grave, softly mounded with the dirt piled over, and the cairn had not yet toppled.

She knew that story, at least. The girl died seven months ago — seven months, less a day. And here she was sleeping quiet, smothered in the earth. Dirt in her mouth, thought Brienne. Again.

 _I’m sorry,_ she told the sleeper. I didn’t know what to do and I did my best and it was wrong. I’m sorry.

She rubbed her fist over her eyes. If only they had found Jaime. But they’d searched in the rubble for days and days, until the choking scent and the soldiers ran them off. _No bodyrobbing._

_We’re only looking for a friend._

_You and everyone else. Go._

There was no way of telling where his bones lay and really (she told herself) it did not matter. He was no more unreachable under a mountain of stone or in some hidden place than he was lying here in the ground -- or standing in front of her. _I’m not a good man,_ he’d said. _You deserve better._

And then he’d gone away to die.

Stupid man. Rude arrogant impossible man. The thought of him was just as much a torment as he had ever been, but now she couldn’t tell him so, couldn’t see the slow smile of delight.

The first time she ever wanted to kiss him, it was because of that smile.

He’d known that, surely. He knew what she wanted before she knew it herself. She didn’t need to tell him what the nearness of his body did to hers, what the memory of him did ...

Methodically she pulled out weeds and grasses til the earth was bare, smoothing it down with the flat of her hand til it was soft and thick as velvet, and wrote:

_I love you._

The earth would carry that secret all over the world until it found him where he was. The only thing she had still to say. Not _I did_ but _I do_.

Brienne of Tarth stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees and started for home.

The sunset turned the light golden and the sky red: an uneasy sight. That meant storms on Tarth, sometimes lasting a full day or more; trim your sail and lash your mast. _Lock the shutters over your windows, Brienne!_

 _No_. She had always liked to feel the rain. The roar of wind, the drop in temperature, and afterwards a sky washed sparkling-clean ... but that was on Tarth. Rain here in the north came creeping in and settled over them to bleed out slow. There was no freshness from that, no clarity. Only the usual work, even harder in the mud.

Methodically she pushed down her next-day’s bread dough for a final rising and set it away from the worst heat of the stove. Feeding them all was her province, little as she liked it.

When had she given up?

Dusk.

Podrick was speaking in the stableyard and an unknown man answering him, though they were too far away to grasp more than tone and color. That would be their rider, then. She did not like him coming on like this in the darkness ... half-darkness.

She found a window and watched them.

She saw her estwhile squire was suspicious, and the man was tired. They were talking a lot — Pod always talked too much — and gesturing. Probably the man couldn’t pay. No one could ever pay.

The baby gurgled. Brienne rocked its swing, absent-mindedly. “Please behave yourself, child. That means no spitting up, no foulness right after you’ve been cleaned and changed, and no ... no boys. No boys, ever.” Although Pod was fairly useful, within his sphere. ”Boys are nothing but trouble.”

And hers was looking at the house like he could see her through the walls.

She found a clean cloth and draped it over her shoulder and checked the child for wetness; then she took herself, child, and cloth out to meet Jaime.

He didn't give any sign of knowing her: except that his mouth turned down when he saw what she carried.

“My lady, this is -“

“Thank you, Podrick. I know who it is.” She cleared her throat. “You’re late to supper, ser. But we saved you a bowl.”

He ate like he hadn’t eaten in a week and by the state of him it might have been true. She refilled the bowl twice with stew — a generous name for what was mostly wild vegetables and rabbit bones — and gave him half a loaf of bread. 

_Her_ portion. _Her_ bread.

Still he didn’t speak, not to her. Every so often he’d say something to Podrick or shift his eyes around the room ... but then the baby started to scream, and after that Jaime didn’t look anywhere but his spoon, his bowl, his hand.

Pod found the grace to take the child and go upstairs early. “I’ll keep her tonight.” They usually alternated, and Brienne was due.

“Thank you.”

When he’d gone, Jaime said: “How old is she?”

Brienne refrained from throwing a chair at his head. “Three years, you’ve been gone three _fucking_ years and that’s the first fucking thing you have to say?”

“You curse like that around your child?”

“Fuck off,” she told him.

He laughed. “Appropriate, at least.”

“You were _dead_ , Jaime Lannister. You don’t get to tell me —“

“Funny how temporary that situation can be—“

Over their heads, Pod was singing a lullabye and undoubtedly listening to every word they yelled; he could hear them at least. “Baby,” he cooed. “Sweet baby. _You_ are a good wee thing. _You_ won't grow up to swear.”

Jaime was looking at her and yes, it _was_ him, despite the beard from traveling and the false hand gone and a horrible change to his eyes; it was his same old watching stillness, cat-patient, like he could catch her with her guard down.

\-- And when he'd caught her: then what?

She said “You can sleep here tonight. Don’t make noise — that includes running your mouth. The baby needs to sleep.”

“How old is she, Brienne?”

“The child is seven months tomorrow. Don’t strain yourself, Kingslayer. I know you can only count to five without taking off your shoes. She isn’t yours.”

_“Brienne.”_

She went upstairs alone.

  
When she came down the next morning he was still there, which was very good for her heart and very bad for her headache.

“Is there breakfast?” he said, mild.

She’d thought about this last night, in between a few bouts of hysterical crying and thin, reedy screaming into her fists. “That’s a silver for the horse.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Usually it’s the same for the room but you, you slept here, downstairs, and ...”

“A marvelous bargain in these troubled times. You aren’t charging me for the stew?”

“Pod is grateful you ate it, even though it gave him another empty belly. He thinks I’m a dreadful cook.”

“You are,” said Jaime. “Shall I be going then?”

Brienne took a deep breath. “There’s one small thing I would like you to do before you leave. If you’re not in a hurry. Just a request.”

“My lady blushes. I didn’t know she was still capable of it.”

She leaned down and kissed him. “Come on.”

Pod met them on the steps, going down while they went up.

Brienne had Jaime’s hand in hers, and whatever expression on her face was one she did not want to share with the squire. He was a decent young man and a surprisingly good housemate, but ...

He said, barely above a whisper: “I’ll go outside awhile. Please don’t wake the baby, she’s just gone to sleep.”

Jaime smelled of horse and sweat and fear and exhaustion and something else she didn’t know, something she didn’t want to question, because the answer could not be one she’d like. How long had he been in those clothes? they were nearly a part of him.

Certainly he needed help removing them. “We’ll have to find you something better.”

“Yours?”

“If it comes to that. I can’t get this knot.”

“Falconer’s knot. You’re tightening it, using two hands. Let me.”

Instead she caught up his face and kissed him again, filthy and sunburned and real.

“I missed you,” he said, afterwards. He was drowsy, still exhausted from riding for days, still far too thin.

She sniffed. “I was so damn angry when you died.”

The ratty beard shifted with his smile. “So was I.”

She wanted to ask where he had been all that time but would not ask, it was not her business to know and it would not help her if he left again.

 _When_ he left her again. When she was alone.

Jaime told her anyway. “After it all ended —“

“Careful. Speak low. She’s only in the next room.”

“When it was over and I was well enough to travel, I went to Dorne. I don’t remember much of it, to tell the truth. I drank a lot of wine. They export the sweet stuff, it travels better, but every merchant has his own dry wine. There’s nothing like the Dornish.”

“Their wine — and the women?” They were said to be very beautiful, she thought; and remembered for the first time in months that she herself was ugly.

“Well,” he said, “ _you’ve_ been fucking, haven’t you? There’s a noisy proof of that in the next room. So what’s the difference?”

“She isn’t mine.”

He searched her face and she stared back, daring him to argue, but he only relaxed against her body. “I _thought_ she was too pretty to be yours. Where’s her mother?”

“Buried, with a heap of stones at her head. Jaime, I — I never meant to have a child. And Pod takes care of her so marvelously. I never know what to _do._ ”

"You don't need to do anything right now," mumbled. He was falling asleep.

She wrapped her arms around him, sobbing noiselessly into his skin.

\-- and woke to the sound of a baby who needed to be changed. The thought of the child made her sick. What was she going to do?

And there was Jaime in the bed, peacefully resting as if he had a right to it.

He had lasted perhaps five minutes before he was groaning into her. All that grunting and sweating seemed a strange thing to topple her heart over, she’d always thought so, but when it came to that she was as much as fool as anyone else.

When he died, she had found other men. Sometimes she paid them and sometimes not. They never seemed to care much for her money; being treated like their only valuable bit was between their legs was an _insult_ , it seemed.

She’d once spent three days more in bed than out of it with a strange man with a broad mouth who did not speak the common tongue. Every time she tried to move away he drew her back and touched her until she was begging. He had left too, dropping a kiss on her mouth and a stack of silvers in the bed and some very earnest words that may have been the sweetest love-poem or _You're an ugly whore,_ for all she knew of it.

It seemed like all men were a disappointment; they differed only in how.

She swung her legs out and went to tend the child.

  
“Last year,” she said to Jaime, who had apparently not lost his habit of following her around like a lost puppy. “We came here last year, midway through. Pod and I were on the road.”

“So was I. Looking for you.”

“We were looking for a place to stay a few nights. Rest the horses — we still had horses then — and ourselves. Are you any good with children? She doesn’t like when I carry her.”

“That’s because you’re holding her like a piece of firewood. Cradle her. Rock her. You’re a _woman_ , for godssake, even if you don’t much look like one. Don’t you know what to do?”

“ _You_ look like a dung-heap that's sprouted hair. And you smell like it. Are you certain you survived?”

“I nearly didn’t. Brienne, believe me, _I tried to find you._ I sent birds all over. They came back or they didn’t but no one knew you or where you were, not for the longest time. It was only bare chance that I met someone who had stayed here ...”

“We were keeping quiet. Off the main roads. I didn’t want any trouble and I’m as recognizable as you are now. More so really, since you’re dead ...”

He cleared his throat. “So. You and Podrick were alone every night on the road?”

“Don’t insinuate. We came riding in a downpour, days and days of rain. We planned to stay a few nights. It was a sort of inn, at the time. Then men came.”

He didn’t speak.

“It didn’t last long. Long enough, but not long. I had — I have my sword still. Your sword. I was in condition then, too. There’s too much to be done here to ... to waste time on unnecessary things.”

“Unnecessary things,” he said. “Yes. I understand.”

“It was my fault. I saw the men come in and thought that was all of them, I didn’t know. One of them had run around the back of the house. Looking for more things to steal, I suppose. They all were yelling about gold. It was madness. These were poor people, anyone could see that, they couldn’t clothe themselves and feed the animals both. If they had gold they’d trade it for bread or try to eat it plain.

“I killed — I killed the ones in the house and went outside to get away from it. I went out the yard, to check the animals, and came around the side there. And I saw them. He was just finished, when I saw him. A minute too late.

"He said something to me, one of those awful things men say, _Bet you have a ripe cunt_ or something--"

Jaime made a soft noise.

Brienne said: “He’d pushed her mouth full of mud. That’s why I didn’t hear her screaming. I didn’t know. I killed him and I helped her but I didn’t stop him. I should have, I would have, but I didn’t _know..."_

“The baby. She died from it?”

“She was only a little string of a girl. Thirteen, fourteen. You’ve heard men calling for water after a knife to the belly? Days of it, til their throat goes dry and closes and they suffocate. That's how she sounded during the birth. Catelyn Stark told me that women’s battlefield was _children_ , and she was right.”

The baby shrieked; she’d pinched it without meaning to.

“Bend out your arm like a bow,” Jaime said. “Hold her against you and give her your breast. Babies need to feel warm.”

She passed over the flailing lump of clothes. “ _You_ take her. _You_ love her. You break your heart when she dies. I have work to do.”

“Is he staying on? Ser Jaime, I mean.”

“No.”

“Did you ask him?”

She gave him a hard look, wasted. He hadn’t quailed under her gaze for some time. “He’ll be going on awhile, when he found what he wanted.”

“Ser — I mean — I thought he came here for you.”

“So did he.”

Three baths in the water-trough and a long time with their sharpest knife, and finally something of the Jaime she had known emerged. He even smiled at her when she came to find him, carrying a stack of clothes.

“Some of these may suit. You aren’t putting anyone out by it. They aren’t mine, nor Podrick’s. See what is best and we’ll sew it to fit you.”

“You’ll sew it?”

“Pod will sew,” she admitted: and he laughed.

“Come in the water with me,” he said.

“It looks cold.”

“Freezing. You can warm it up.”

She remained safely out of reach. “Find suitable clothes and get dressed, as best as you can manage it.”

“And later?”

“Later I’ll help you out of them.”

_I love you,_ she wrote on his skin with her hands, her mouth. She pressed it into the flesh alongside his ribs. I love you.

He said: “I thought about you every night.”

“Not during the day? Faithless man.”

“I tried not to think of you then. At night, all I had to do was lay down and close my eyes and there you were with me. Warm for me, dripping for me.”

She shivered. “I used to think about you.” His hand inside her, yes, he always waited until she was whimpering and pleading before he'd do what they both wanted most. His voice saying _Brienne_ in her ear, grinding his teeth; or just that slow exhale when he came.

“Did you use your hand, when you thought about me?”

“N-not always. Did you?”

“Often.” Kissing her. “It was never as good as you.”

Was it as good as Cersei? she wanted to say. But that would be hurting him and there was plenty of that to come.

“You’re quiet and tense, wench. Never worry that you have a rival; I only have one hand to use on myself. You have two. And a few other bits I like as well.”

“Did you fuck other people? In Dorne, I mean. Or — elsewhere. Did you fuck anyone else?”

“I did not fuck Cersei, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“And in Dorne? Are the women as beautiful and generous as they say?”

“They are very beautiful. Generous? I wouldn’t know. Brienne, I said words to you. I was trying to find you. I did not break my promise — I didn’t want to.”

A long silence.

Then: “Well,” she said. “At least one of us was faithful. Shame it had to be you.”

And she slipped out of bed before he could answer.

Daylight returned and brought more work, as it always did. She fetched the buckets and yoke and started downland, where the stream tapered around trees and bubbled up into a little pool, pure and sweet.

“Brienne.”

She pushed past him. “We need water.”

“I can carry a bucket. Give me one.” He tugged. The buckets unbalanced and fell, clattering, and the yoke too. 

Stupid man. “I am perfectly capable—”

“Did you want to do it?”

“To fuck other men? Yes.” She felt the words rise up. “I’m just like your sister after all. I hurt people and I kill people and I fuck every man who can get it up. My goodness, you do have a type.”

“Don’t talk about her. Why would — you told me things, you promised me things, I spent three years, three _fucking_ years—“

“No,” she said. “I'm the one who's been fucking the last few years.”

He was pale, straight and furious and beautiful, and he looked ready to push her to the ground. “Why did you do it? _Why_?”

“You were dead. Should I have waited for the day of judgement?” And she _had_ waited, searching every face at every town or farmhouse they passed through. _Have you seen ..._ _No,_ was the reply. _No._

She had resolved to find him or forget him. She would not spend her life grieving. And the weeks passed and the months and then it was a year and one day, and that was enough.

Brienne first got very, very drunk; then she took a man into her room. She hadn’t been sure of his name, even. Only that it wasn’t _Jaime Lannister_.

She wiped her eyes. “I was tired of waiting for you.”

“Was he any good?”

“Which one?” she said: and something twitched in his face, some emotion he was trying to hide. “No. No, Jaime. _No_. Don't look like that -- don't ever look at me like that. They were ... nothing. They were never anything. Even the ones who knew what to do smelled wrong or sounded wrong, I couldn’t close my eyes hard enough to pretend it was you and I _tried_. Some of it was -- it was things you didn't do. One man had a bar through his tongue, and —“

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“You asked. You want it. Listen. He pushed it inside me and I thought I was going to fly to pieces. Someone afterwards told me they’d set a watcher at the door, because I was so loud they thought I was being beaten or worse."

He nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate knowing you had some pleasure in my absence. And if that’s all ..."

“At the end of the night I paid him for his cock and I kicked him out, because _you were dead._ You were dead and I still wanted you. What was I supposed to do with it? What should I do now, when you leave me again? Tell me. Tell me what to do, because everything I know how to do is wrong.”

He looked at her a long moment.

Then he sat down on the ground and began picking flowers. Clover, lady’s slipper. Yellow-headed sourstem. “Come here and help me.”

So she did.

It was a relief to sit next to him and not want to hit him, at least for the moment. “What are you doing?”

“Making a crown.”

“For my head or yours?”

He bent over the work. “Myrcella taught me to do this. Isn’t that funny? She spent many afternoons teaching her dear uncle Jaime girlish things. Riding and talking. I don’t think Cersei ever cared for that sort of game; she had real crowns to chase after.

”You know I was never allowed to be close to Joffrey, it mattered too much; he needed to be Robert's child. And Tommen ... she tried to make him into something he was not. It wasn’t my place to interfere. But Myrcella didn't matter to Cersei, not like that. So she was my own child. I got to keep her, in a way. And now ...”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know about grief. My children, those were a slow loss. I suppose children always are. I even grieved for my father. Of course in a way that was my fault too, since freeing Tyrion was my decision. I don't know how much I blame him ... and I would gladly have killed Robert, if she told me to do it, if I could have gotten away with it. A Kingslayer to the end.”

“That is not who you are.”

“Here,” he said. “It's finished. Hold still.” He settled the ring over her head as carefully as though it was the finest lace, delicate as sea-foam. “You argue out of habit, but isn’t that who I am? _Kingslayer_. And you my whore.”

“I’ve been called worse things.” Her crown smelled as light and airy as it felt resting on her head; he'd used the long-stemmed meadow flowers, purple and white. A bird fluttered down near them and began to hunt in the grass. “Have you ever eaten clover?” 

“No. Why would you do that?”

“It’s quite sweet. Taste it.” She held it out to him and he took it, took her hand, twining together their fingers. “Jaime...”

He kissed her. “It tastes like you.”

“It does not.”

“Are you going to make me leave?”

“I thought you’d want to. After — after I told you.”

“I noticed you took me into your bed _before_ that little disclosure.”

“Yes,” she said, fierce. “I wanted you. Are you going to leave me again?”

“No.” His mouth was hot on her neck.

“What if I tell you to leave? Beat you with your own sword. Throw things at you. Deny you my bed.”

“I’ll crawl in your window and kiss you until you give in. It wouldn’t take long.”

“ _Promise_ me you will. Swear it to me, Jaime Lannister. I need your words.”

So he did.

**Author's Note:**

> “falconer’s knot” is of course done with one hand, as the other is bearing the weight of a hungry, stubborn, irritable bird. 
> 
> it seemed appropriate for our one-handed stubborn irritable Jaime.
> 
> i dont think you can actually tighten it by pulling on both ends, and it’s somewhat of an insult to Brienne-the-sailor, to say she wouldn’t recognize a halfhitch.
> 
> the author begs you suspend disbelief for this moment.
> 
> not for the other moments tho. all the rest is totally, totally plausible.


End file.
